How do I find the MySQL my.cnf location

robinmag picture robinmag · Mar 20, 2010 · Viewed 924.1k times · Source

Is there a MySQL command to locate the my.cnf configuration file, similar to how PHP's phpinfo() locates its php.ini?

Answer

tadamson picture tadamson · Mar 21, 2010

There is no internal MySQL command to trace this, it's a little too abstract. The file might be in 5 (or more?) locations, and they would all be valid because they load cascading.

  • /etc/my.cnf
  • /etc/mysql/my.cnf
  • $MYSQL_HOME/my.cnf
  • [datadir]/my.cnf
  • ~/.my.cnf

Those are the default locations MySQL looks at. If it finds more than one, it will load each of them & values override each other (in the listed order, I think). Also, the --defaults-file parameter can override the whole thing, so... basically, it's a huge pain in the butt.

But thanks to it being so confusing, there's a good chance it's just in /etc/my.cnf.

(if you just want to see the values: SHOW VARIABLES, but you'll need the permissions to do so.)